Hi. My D is entering her junior year in high school. She has always had a love for music and theatre. She began performing at 8 years old in musical theatre. She has had many leads and supporting roles. She has trained vocally since 11 years old and has participated in several MT vocal competitions. She chose at a young age not to really pursue dance. Her goal was to become a musical therapist until a recent class trip to New York City and Broadway. The girl cried her eyes out when she got there and told me in a text that this was the place she needs to be. After much debate and discussion, we have decided to support her in her journey. Our only concern is that she is not heavy in the dancing. She can dance OK, but she is certainly not professionally trained. She does well in tap and we recently put her in a beginner teen ballet and jazz class.
We recently began our search in to colleges that offer a BFA in MT. It scares me to pieces seeing just how competitive it is. Some of the schools have mentioned that they are not heavy in the dance, but require it at audition time to see if the student will be “teachable”. We know that we will probably have to audition to multiple schools, due to the heavy competitiveness! The schools right now that we are most interested in due to closeness to home and financial reasons are: Millikin, Illinois Wesleyan, Columbia (Chicago), Roosevelt, Western Illinois, Central Michigan, Western Michigan, University of Michigan, Otterbein, Drake, University of Evansville, Baldwin Wallace, University of Indiana, Northwestern, University of Cincinnati and University of Wisconsin and Viterbo.
Any personal information you can give us regarding these schools and the difficulty of the audition process would be so greatly appreciated and perhaps calm my nerves a bit. Also, if there are any schools I might have missed that are in or around the Midwest, please add.
Thanks…Yvonne
Those schools are all solid choices for a BFA in MT! The audition process is certainly very long and grueling, and each school has its own audition generally and specific requirements. Broadway is very dancing intensive but that can definitely be enhanced when studying for the degree, it shouldn’t be a big problem in terms of getting into the school.
Have you looked at NYU? I know it might not be that cost-friendly, but New York is certainly the place to be for musical theatre. It has an amazing program and access to high quality staff who can refer you to broadway producers, etc.
Other than that, I suggest for your daughter enhancing her acting resume in the meantime, working on her repertoire of talents (accents, range)–all important qualities in auditions.
I also have done musical theatre from a very young age :), many of my friends (HS Class of 2017) are attending schools like NYU, Boston Conservatory, Montclair State, ETC for a BFA in MT. I even applied to a couple! 
Although I personally decided to take a different route and pursue Pre-Med, I wish your daughter the best.
I know about several of the schools you listed. I would nix Columbia if only because their academics are weak, even compared to the state schools on your list. Roosevelt is a nice school for performance; I had a friend there for acting and he liked it. IL Wesleyan is not as strong as they like to think. I attended a performance of “The Glass Menagerie” there some years back and it was not good. Things may have changed, but that production was pretty weak. I had another friend who just graduated BFA MT from Western and she’s employed. Most of her cohort seems to be employed. Western has had financial trouble lately though, so that may or may not be something you’re concerned about. They had to get rid of a few low enrollment majors because of financial strain. Millikin is a great program with great facilities, but the competition to get into the program has been growing over the past few years. But, Millikin is basically a tiny U-Mich, so if you can get in, it’s great. I can tell you for sure that they take people with limited dance experience because I knew some.
Some things to take into consideration when looking at schools in order to compare programs are: whether or not freshman can audition, cut or no-cut programs, opportunity for outside dance and vocal instruction, number and type of facilities, who’s teaching the classes, local performance opportunities, differences in curriculum (eg, some BFA programs make students take a semester of piano and music theory/ear training and others don’t), if they do a senior showcase, what scholarships are available, etc. It might be worth it to do a spreadsheet for all of that.
On the location side of things, you might add Guthrie/Minn, DePaul, and Webster to your list